Passages -- David Foster Wallace

If you were a kid in college around the turn of the century, as I was, and the type of kid who reads books or hangs around with kids who read books, you probably read or tried to read "Infinite Jest."

Or you knew someone who had read it, or you heard it was great, or you kept seeing it on your friends' bookshelves. It was ubiquitous. It was THE "it" book for turn-of-the-century college kids who read books or hang around with kids who read books.

To a few of my friends and me, "Infinite Jest" by David Foster Wallace was revelatory -- inspiring and intimidating at the same time. We read and puzzled over it and talked about it. Then we loaned it to and bought it for others. The copy I first read was a loaner from a friend. And I've given the book as a gift three times that I can remember.

David Foster Wallace hanged himself last Friday, and it has affected me more than I would have expected.

He was my favorite living writer -- a man so talented that 1,000 pages into "Infinite Jest," I was still marveling at his skill and imagination. But I'd never met the guy in person. I knew him only by his book jacket photos and writing.

My reaction, I think, is only partially caused by the realization that there won't be any more new David Foster Wallace books. That's the practical explanation, but it runs deeper than that.

Like Kerouac in the '50s or Dylan in the '60s, Wallace had a laser-precise way of knowing what a generation was feeling. And he could articulate it before his audience even consciously knew they were feeling it. You would read his work, whether it was his novels, short stories or essays, and think, "Yeah. Yeah. That's it."

Not everyone liked Wallace's work, even those who recognized his talent. Literary critics pointed to his tendency to show off, as if it would have been preferable for him to, you know, tone it down a bit. But that "showing off" was born not of vanity but ambition -- of trying big things and pulling them off with grace, damn near every time.

He had also been accused of being more technician than writer, all skill and no heart. But that's ridiculous, a reactionary opinion of those who couldn't get used to someone wielding language so audaciously. Wallace's grasp of the late 20th, early 21st century human condition and his compassionate humanity are as evident upon close reading as his technical prowess.

Wallace was a man who not only entertained readers; he also made us feel like maybe we weren't so alone in the world.

It's a tragedy, then, that somehow his 46 years of life came down to him being home alone with a rope. And in hindsight it's easy, if somewhat chilling, to tally up all the references to suicide in his writing and say we should have seen it coming.

But I didn't see it coming. And I keep feeling sadder about it.

* Pat Muir can be reached at 577-7693 or pmuir@yakimaherald.com.

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